Here’s a question I received via email, which I’ll answer here so others can benefit from the answer.
QUESTION
Would you be able to give examples of how the research has been used for decision making around giving money/grants?
ANSWER
Sure, here are a few examples:
Our research on the history of philanthropy helped us decide to be more ambitious: “we are more interested in working on daunting problems over long periods of time after learning about some of philanthropy’s past contributions.” This has increased the amount of attention and funding we’ve spent on daunting challenges that will likely require investment over many years to achieve the impacts we hope for.
Our shallow investigations into several different global catastrophic risks enabled us to choose initial priorities in that category. Most importantly, we launched grantmaking focus areas in “biosecurity and pandemic preparedness” and “potential risks from advanced artificial intelligence.” Across those two focus areas we’ve since made more than $80 million in grants.
Our research on moral patienthood persuaded us to begin making grants related to fish welfare. Since then, we’ve made more than $6 million in fish welfare grants.
Here’s a question I received via email, which I’ll answer here so others can benefit from the answer.
QUESTION
Would you be able to give examples of how the research has been used for decision making around giving money/grants?
ANSWER
Sure, here are a few examples:
Our research on the history of philanthropy helped us decide to be more ambitious: “we are more interested in working on daunting problems over long periods of time after learning about some of philanthropy’s past contributions.” This has increased the amount of attention and funding we’ve spent on daunting challenges that will likely require investment over many years to achieve the impacts we hope for.
Our shallow investigations into several different global catastrophic risks enabled us to choose initial priorities in that category. Most importantly, we launched grantmaking focus areas in “biosecurity and pandemic preparedness” and “potential risks from advanced artificial intelligence.” Across those two focus areas we’ve since made more than $80 million in grants.
Our research on moral patienthood persuaded us to begin making grants related to fish welfare. Since then, we’ve made more than $6 million in fish welfare grants.